An Experiment with an Air Pump: medical ethics staged

Physical disfigurement or a genetic misstep resulting in debilitating disease: these uncontrollable factors can alter the shape of a life. Yet, as we look to medicine and science to gain power over such conditions, what methods are ethically acceptable? At what point does the end result of greater knowledge or even the development of a treatment justify the means used to get there? These are the questions explored in Shelagh Stephenson’s An Experiment with an Air Pump.

The play, first performed in 1998 and currently running at Giant Olive Theatre in London, draws its initial tableau from the 1768 painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by the English painter Joseph Wright. Wright depicts a gathering of people watching, with some horror, the demonstration of an air pump as a bird slowly suffocates within. At the opening of the play, that scene is recreated in the home of Joseph Fenwick, on New Year's Eve 1799.

(Image: Alexander Ford for Giant Olive Theatre Company)

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia
is clearly a source of inspiration for Stephenson, though her handling of
the material lacks Stoppard's succinct, witty plotting. We are taken
back and forth in time, from the present day to the 18th century, where
we meet Fenwick's family. The ambitious doctor busies himself with his
work at the local Literary & Philosophical Society, while his
daughters squabble and his unhappy wife drinks too much and laments
his neglect. Their Scottish maid Isobel Bridie, who has a spinal
deformity, serves meals while she resists the (apparently) romantic
attentions of Tom, one of Fenwick's medical students.

Two hundred years later, the house is again threatened. Unless Ellen,
a geneticist, takes a research post involving the use and disposal of
human embryos, she and her husband Tom may be forced to sell the home
and move away. Yet Tom has serious ethical qualms over his wife's
research. As this tension persists, Tom becomes obsessed with a
box of human bones that he finds in the house. We return to the 18th century,
wondering which unlucky character will end up in the box. Who will be
the bird in the air pump?

As this medical detective story unfolds, Stephenson's handling of the
ethical issues she raises is too often heavy-handed. This is
particularly apparent in the modern scenes, where characters often tell
too much and show too little. The 18th-century storyline holds more
nuance and interest (though here, too, characters seem to spend too much
time sitting around a table, drinking claret and arguing).

The character nearest a villain is Tom, but his fascination with Isobel does not come across as strong enough to cause the resulting tragedy. Ideas of bodysnatching,
dissection, and wax anatomies are tossed about, but none are explored in
great depth. The closing scene makes a vague reference to the opening
tableau, with a toss of white feathers over a dead (human) body. Has
this victim, like the bird in the air pump, been reduced to a mere
experiment?

The play raises important issues about genetics, disability,
experimentation and medical ethics more broadly, but the unwieldy form
of the drama itself proves distracting. Too many ideas are brought
forward, and too few are given room to develop. As the lights dimmed, I
was left wishing that Stephenson had exerted more control over the shape
of her play: I felt it needed sharper framing, better dissection, a
good chop.

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